Brandy Julep

Ingredients

2 teaspoons superfine sugar

1 ounce water

5 to 6 sprigs mint

3 ounces cognac

1/2 tablespoon rum -- dark rum

highball glass

Instructions:

In a chilled silver julep cup or highball glass, dissolve the sugar in the cold water. Add 3 mint sprigs and gently crush them against the sides of the glass. Remove them, fill the glass with shaved or finely crushed ice, and pour in the cognac. (Use the good stuff.) Add more ice and stir vigorously, trying not to touch the outside of the glass with your hands, until the glass frosts. Float the rum on top (a Bermudan or Jamaican one will work fine), insert 2 or 3 sprigs of fresh mint, and serve.

For a Georgia Julep, cut the sugar in half, use 2 ounces cognac, and add 1 ounce peach brandy.*

* Most domestic peach brandies are sticky to a fault; if possible, use an imported peach eau-de-vie; the 100-proof Southern Comfort will also yield excellent results, even though it's got a bourbon (i.e., whiskey) base (steer clear of the 80-proof, though).

The Wondrich Take:

Ologies have always had a tendency to club together. Take, say, toxicology and herpetology -- that's the study of snakes, for those of you who aren't trained naturalists or Lemony Snicket readers. An expert in one can usually shoot his way around the other and expect to come in under par. Same goes for mixology and pharmacology. Well, perhaps not so much any more, but they used to be pretty damn chummy. From the Middle Ages, when distilled spirits first start turning up,* to the dawn of the Modern Pharmaceutical Age (the year they invented methaqualone, whenever that was), there was no more effective medicine in the pharmacopoeia than a good, stiff belt.

Stiff belts being stiff belts, though, they're not for everybody, or every occasion. Sometimes, you need something a little gentler on the pipes. Like maybe a julep. "Julep syrup -- extinguishes thirst, soothes the throat, suits an inflamed stomach, and, when drunk mixed with snow, checks a high fever." (That's what it says in the Liber Almansoris of Rhazes, anyway -- the medieval PDR, more or less.) And what precisely is this julep syrup? "Three ounces of violets are macerated for a day in three pints of water; three pounds of sugar are added to the strained water." What the hell here? Violets? And where's the hooch?

To get from Rhazes' violet syrup to the Kentucky mint julep we all know and love, a lot of things had to happen -- not the least of them being the discovery of Kentucky. We won't get into any of that. One thing's for certain, though: None of these events were more important (mixologically speaking) than the idea some unheralded genius had to administer the aqua vitae, the "water of life," and the "julep" together in the same glass -- thus creating what was perhaps the very first cocktail of them all. Whoever thought mint might make a nice syrup was no slouch, either.

At any rate, it wasn't until the settlement of the South, and the discovery of a climate as debilitating as any on earth, that iced, juleped-up liquor came into its own as a therapeutic beverage. Before the Civil War, it was a tonic in the morning, a cooler at noon, a pick-me-up at twilight -- you get the idea. Pretty much what Coca-Cola is now. As Virginia humorist George William Bagby observed during his travels around the state, "All the scenery in the world -- avail[s] not to keep a Virginian away from a julep on a hot summer day." Only -- here's the kicker -- those antebellum juleps? Odds are, they didn't have whiskey in 'em. A true gentleman, you see, wouldn't touch the stuff. A true gentleman took brandy in his julep -- imported, fancy French brandy. Now, history has decisively shown up just about every other aspect of the Old South's ideology. This one, we're not so sure.